A Comparison of Nonparametric Methods in the Graduation of Mortality: Application to Data from the Valencia Region (Spain)

The nonparametric graduation of mortality data aims to estimate death rates by carrying out a smoothing of the crude rates obtained directly from original data. The main difference with regard to parametric models is that the assumption of an age-dependent function is unnecessary, which is advantageous when the information behind the model is unknown, as one cause of error is often the choice of an inappropriate model. This paper reviews the various alternatives and presents their application to mortality data from the Valencia Region, Spain. The comparison leads us to the conclusion that the best model is a smoothing by means of Generalised Additive Models (GAM) with splines. The most interesting part of this paper is the development of a plan that can be applied to mortality data for a wide range of age groups in any geographical area, allowing the most appropriate table to be chosen for the data in hand.     

Uncertain Productivity Growth and the Choice between FDI and Export

While determinants of FDI patterns have received widespread attention, the timing of their surge remains largely unexplained. According to the proximity–concentration trade‐off argument, a surge in FDI in times of decaying international transportation costs seemingly represents a paradox. Besides transportation costs, other factors have contextually changed: in particular, the uncertainty that firms bear has increased. Enriching the classical choice problem of a multinational firm with insights from the literature on investment under uncertainty, we illustrate how different types of uncertainty determine the timing and optimal entry mode (i.e. FDI or export) of a multinational enterprise into a new market.     

The effects of globalization and technology on the elasticity of substitution

The elasticity of substitution between capital and labor (\(\sigma\)) is usually considered a “deep parameter”. This paper shows, in contrast, that \(\sigma\) is affected by both globalization and technology, and that different intensities in these drivers have different consequences for the OECD and the non-OECD economies. In the OECD, we find that the elasticity of substitution between capital and labor is below unity; that it increases along with the degree of globalization; but it decreases with the level of technology. Although results for the non-OECD area are more heterogeneous, we find that technology enhances the substitutability between capital and labor. We also find evidence of a non-significant impact of the capital-output ratio on the labor share irrespective of the degree of globalization (which would be consistent with an average aggregate Cobb–Douglas technology). Given the relevance of \(\sigma\) for economic growth and the functional distribution of income, the intertwined linkage among globalization, technology and the elasticity of substitution should be taken into account in any policy makers’ objective function.     

Does immigration boost per capita income?

Using a cross-section of countries, we adapt Frankel and Romer's (1999) IV strategy to international labor mobility. Controlling for institutional quality, trade, and financial openness, we establish a robust and non-negative causal effect of immigration on real per capita income.     

Innovation and Trade Policy Coordination: The Role of Firm Heterogeneity

Recent studies have concluded that R&D grants can induce firms to export and that exporting and innovating can be complementary activities at the firm level. Yet the trade literature has paid little attention to the scope of innovation policy as a stimulus to both trade and innovation. To investigate this question, we rely on a general workhorse model of trade and firm heterogeneity with firm investments in R&D activities. The interplay of innovation and trade policies uncover novel results. In particular, we show that the effects of either policy depend on the degree of protectionism in a country. Therefore, countries can respond differently to the same policy, and similarly to different policies. In such a context, different governments may face different trade‐offs in achieving a given target.     

Perception of risk from air pollution and reported behaviors: a cross-sectional survey study in four cities

We investigate how public perceptions of air pollution, risk beliefs and self-reported actions to limit personal exposure to ambient air pollution vary across cities. Our analysis also examines the extent to which a number of individual-level variables are associated to self-protective and information-seeking actions due to bad air quality. Data was collected through a questionnaire survey in four cities with a total sample of 1202 inhabitants. We found a moderate variation in the subjective evaluation of local air pollution between cities, as well as in the levels of annoyance and distress due to air pollution. There was relatively little variation in perceived severity, worry and self-reported actions. No variation was found for self-reported attention to air quality levels and controllability beliefs regarding the risks from air pollution. Preliminary modeling of four self-reported actions suggests that self-reported attention to air quality levels and worry are important predictors of self-protective and information seeking behavior. We conclude that both personal and contextual factors have to be taken into account in order to understand public reactions to outdoor urban air pollution. We discuss the implications in terms of risk and health communication.     

Buying a Book as a Christmas Gift: Two Routes to Customer Immersion

Although services and retailing are usually regarded as relevant experiential contexts and investments in creating an experiential environment are growing, little consideration has been given to the investigation of the general consumption experiences and their emotions in retailing. By adopting an ethnographic approach to study the buying processes in two Italian bookstores – a small traditional family-run bookshop and a large international chain store – products that, by definition, are high in perceived complexity and symbolism, we present two distinct business models based on different processes of valorisation of purchasers' emotions. The two-path model towards customer immersion represents different strategies to involve consumers emotionally: one is based on increasing the positive emotional load, the other on decreasing the negative emotional load. Decisions about physical layout, display, services and sales assistance should follow consistently.     

Peanut exposure during pregnancy,breastfeeding and complementary feeding: perceptions of practices in four countries

Food allergy is an increasing problem worldwide. Allergy to peanuts is a particular concern, given that this is rarely outgrown and may be associated with life‐threatening anaphylaxis. However, it is unclear what factors are responsible for a perceived increase in prevalence rates. One matter on which scientists agree, however, is that exposure to peanuts early in life is significant – although whether early exposure protects or sensitizes to allergy is unclear. There is no significant research that currently records differences in early life exposure either within or between populations. This exploratory study makes a first step in this direction using focus groups conducted in four countries with disparate ‘peanut experiences’ to characterize early exposure in these. The ultimate aim is to help in the development of a survey instrument to attain nationally representative samples of consumers and hence to use the results from this to compare with allergy prevalence data collected in other parts of the European Union‐funded ‘EuroPrevall’ project. The results in this study not only reveal considerable similarities across countries (e.g. in terms of lack of knowledge of guidelines; lack of changes in feeding behaviour during/after pregnancy, feelings that diet variety in children is important) but also one or two interesting and potentially important differences, such as increased consumption in Bulgarian (and some Spanish) breastfeeding mothers because of the ability of peanuts to facilitate lactation. Study limitations and future study intentions are also discussed.     

The fading 1990s in Japan: Driving forces behind the unemployment upsurge

This paper sheds new light on the causes of the unemployment upsurge in Japan during the “fading 1990s”, an unprecedented period of structural crisis. We estimate a labor market model and identify the main macroeconomic determinants of labor demand and labor supply decisions in the last decades. We then conduct dynamic simulations and assess the relative contribution of these determinants to the evolution of unemployment from 1990 to 2002. Beyond the leading role exerted by the decline in productivity growth, we find the active and expansionary measures undertaken by the government had an overall negative effect on the labor market.     

Structural VARs and noninvertible macroeconomic models

We resume the line of research pioneered by C. A. Sims and Zha (Macroeconomic Dynamics, 2006, 10, 231–272) and make two novel contributions. First, we provide a formal treatment of partial fundamentalness—that is, the idea that a structural vector autoregression (VAR) can recover, either exactly or with good approximation, a single shock or a subset of shocks, even when the underlying model is nonfundamental. In particular, we extend the measure of partial fundamentalness proposed by Sims and Zha to the finite‐order case and study the implications of partial fundamentalness for impulse‐response and variance‐decomposition analysis. Second, we present an application where we validate a theory of news shocks and find it to be in line with the empirical evidence.